SAP Q1 revenue increases 3%, cloud business booming

SAP revenue improves thanks to its expanding cloud business

SAP Q1 revenue increased 3% to $5.1 billion, compared with Q1 of 2013. The organization attributes its revenue increase to a 60% increase in revenue from cloud subscriptions and support year-over-year.

The German software company's net profit also increased 3% to $739 million. SAP co-Chief Executive Bill McDermott expects the company to generate $8 billion in 2014, an increase of approximately $400 million over last year, he said in an earnings statement.

Happy clouds

U.S. cloud subscriptions and support were critical to SAP's business in Q1. SAP's overall cloud revenue run rate was $1.5 billion overall, with approximately 50% of the company's cloud revenue coming from the U.S.

SAP has more than 36 million cloud application subscribers to date.

SAP HANA

SAP released a new version of its Business One application for the HANA platform in March, a few weeks after announcing HANA's consumption-based model. In August, HP launched a cloud service for HANA designed to help organizations analyze big data in the cloud. Since its launch in 2011, SAP HANA has registered more than 3200 customers.